April 18, 2010

Photoshop Skills Practice

I’ve been wanting to improve my Photoshop skills of late. Not simply in the arena of photo retouching, but also in the arena of graphics work. While in the local Barnes and Noble the other day, I was perusing the “Digital Arts” section and ran across the book 100% Photoshop by Steve Caplin. In this instructional tome, he guides you through a number of exercises designed to help your graphics building skills.

EVERYTHING is done from scratch! No clipping and pasting from somewhere else. You name it, the screw heads, the light switch, the doorknob, the rips in the wallpaper, the lighting, all is created by you the user. You start with a blank white page and through a building up of layers you end with a scene.

After a day and a half of work, below is my first effort. (If you click the image you’ll go to my Smugmug page where you can see the full detail of the image… once there if you click the “O” at the top of the image you’ll see the “original sized version). I hope you like it, but again really I am doing this for the skills practice.

And if you would like to see the image without the shadowing and lighting effects click here (allows for more of the details.)